71–80 of 143 posts
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"
> "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" There's a good book on this called "Damned Lies and Statistics" that I recommend to people.[1,2] [1]: https://archive.org/details/damnedliesstatis00best [2]: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520274709/damned-lies-and-s...
https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff-ebook...
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> On the other hand, some technical books don't require agents, and O'Reilly has to be a very large publisher in terms of books sold. I think you are drastically over-estimating the share of developers that read software development related books. Out of the 150+ software engineers I worked with on a daily basis throughout my career so far, I can guarantee you not even 5% have ever read programming books (and I work…
well, you have a different 150 than I do, I'm afraid, and I was also at a FAANG. A really high percentage of people I know have O'Reilly books on their shelves.
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> On the other hand, some technical books don't require agents, and O'Reilly has to be a very large publisher in terms of books sold. I think you are drastically over-estimating the share of developers that read software development related books. Out of the 150+ software engineers I worked with on a daily basis throughout my career so far, I can guarantee you not even 5% have ever read programming books (and I work…
Really? I can't think of any dev I've worked with who didn't at least have some reference books handy. Though to be fair, it's been 10 years or so since I've worked in-person with people on a daily basis, so maybe my impression is just way out of date. I still buy the occasional programming book, but nothing like I used to now that we have all the online resources.
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Yes, I've also struggled to pause many disagreements just to clarify terms, ironically because the other person didn't get what I was doing since there is no common word for this sort of disagreement. If anyone has a good one, please chime in.
Semantic mismatch? Miscontextualization?
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I know that I know nothing is a very important realization, though, and if a lot of words helps someone else realize that they know nothing, too, it's probably worth it.
Sure, but don’t click the publish button. There is already so much noise out there that we shouldn’t actively drown out people who actually do know something.
I really don't like "fact-checking" articles like this which don't contain many useful facts, only pedantry. The first comment (by Kristen McLean from NPD BookScan) is much more interesting than the article itself: >>>0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more >>>0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies >>>2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies >>>3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-1…
I think that 66% selling under 1,000 is just as damning as the "less than 12 copies" thing making the rounds from the DOJ interpretation
Books ain't it!
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On video game sales, I find it interesting how successful games can be while being 90% the same as an existing established game. I’m not coming at this from some kind of ethics/copyright perspective, I think it’s totally fine to rehash the same idea. I’m just surprised they sell so well when I look and think “why would I buy this, I basically already have it”. The particular example I’m thinking of is a series called…
To me Plate Up seems probably as similar to Overcooked as Mafia is to GTA (maybe even less similar, actually). Yeah both are sort of about a similar thing with a similar third-person view but after that similarities end. If you don't care about a genre all games in it are the same to you. Definitely no need to be discouraged if a game you want to make already exists, but "same game with different polish" is not the c…
Overcooked has specific arcade levels each with their own infuriating gimmick. You either can beat it or you cant.
Plate Up, despite having similar mechanics (place food onto stove to cook it), is quite different. You have to take orders yourself, clean up after customers, and you win money that you use to upgrade the kitchen. That alone makes it a very different game than Overcooked's arcade levels.
I'll probably buy it.